Anaconda-becoming: Huni Kuin image-songs, an Amerindian relational aesthetics

After depicting the contemporary scene of Huni Kuin ayahuasca shamanism and artistic agency, I analyze a selection of image-songs from this ritual. The songs unveil the workings of embodied perception and synesthesia, that is, the transductions of bodily sensations and perceptions in vision, rhythm,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Horizontes antropológicos 2018-08, Vol.24 (51), p.17-49
Main Author: Lagrou, Els
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
ANTHROPOLOGY
Ayahuasca
Becoming
Bodily sensations
canto
Colonialism
estética relacional ameríndia
Museums
Native peoples
Rhythm
Rivers
Shamanism
SOCIAL SCIENCES, INTERDISCIPLINARY
Songs
Synesthesia
Traditions
xamanismo
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Summary:After depicting the contemporary scene of Huni Kuin ayahuasca shamanism and artistic agency, I analyze a selection of image-songs from this ritual. The songs unveil the workings of embodied perception and synesthesia, that is, the transductions of bodily sensations and perceptions in vision, rhythm, song and sound. The experience entails a process of other-becoming where to know means to see through the eyes of Other; to be covered with the skin/ornaments of those beings one has consumed and to sing through their voice. This other-becoming is a becoming in a deleuzian sense, which means that the lived experience is situated in-between the space of self and other. In this context the expression “you are what you eat” has specific implications for one’s health and for the acquisition of agentive and perceptive capabilities of other beings. The ritual technique of almost becoming consists of alternatingly producing and undoing temporary transformations through song.
ISSN:0104-7183
1806-9983
1806-9983
DOI:10.1590/S0104-71832018000200002